Halloween Mani! Cheshire Cat Nails and Costume

Hello all! So yesterday was one of my favorite holidays, Halloween! I didn't really get to do anything exciting outside of work but work was a blast! Most of the staff dressed up as Disney characters and I was the Cheshire Cat from the movie Alice in Wonderland. My friend, who told me about the job, dressed as Alice! It was fun because we totally didn't plan it together. She did my face paint, which scared a couple of kids and most of them told me they found it creepy. haha. Oh well most of them could tell who I was suppose to be, which is fun. I'm going to share with you my nails I wore for the occasion and the costume I made!

As for my nails, I decided for each of my thumbs I would do the Cheshire's face. For my right hand I only did the smile because I'm still not that skilled painting with my left hand due to being right handed. For the rest of my nails I did his stripes. I painted the purple first which was a bad idea because it made the fuchsia color much darker than it really is, you can tell my looking at the thumb with his full face. 

I'm pretty happy with the way the nails came out. I started doing this mani with tape but I don't have proper nail tape so I lose patience and start painting the stripes themselves. So that's why they aren't perfect.

I was so surprised that I had proper Cheshire Cat colored polish! I do love my bright colors! 

What I used:

• Base colors: 
• Striped nails: LA Colors Fun in the Sun
• Left thumb: Zoya Charisma
• Right thumb: Sinful Colors Black on Black
• Stripes: Zoya Charisma
• Thumbs: White, black, yellow, red and pink acrylic paint
• Nail art brush and dotting tool

So I made my costume with furry ribbon stuff, safety pins, a sweater and jeans. I also made my ears with a headband, felt and cotton balls (genius idea thought up by Tara). I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.

The idea behind my costume was that I was the Cheshire Cat disappearing. In the original Disney movie he says, "Most everyone's mad here. You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself." He says this while he is vanishing. Below is the picture I used for my inspiration. 

I hope you all enjoyed the nails I painted to go along with my costume and my costume itself! What did you guys where on your nails for Halloween? And if you dressed up, what was your costume? I hope everyone had a fun Halloween this year!

Until next time,

Erin

"This is Halloween" Challenge! Day 11: Recreate Your Favorite Manicure

Hello! It's HALLOWEEN! AHHHH! I am excited! I get to dress up at work, along with all of my co workers! It should be fun, the theme is Disney! Can you guess who I will be? I will be posting my costume nails tomorrow, along with me dressed in my costume! (Maybe if I get a good picture!) Anyways it's the last day of the "This is Halloween" Challenge! The objective was to recreate your favorite manicure done by someone else. I choose to recreate this adorable mummy gradient mani done by Amoki's Corner.

Aren't they just the cutest mummies ever?! I loved the way Amoki did her nails and what an amazing idea for the gradient challenge! I was very impressed and really loved her look, thus why I recreated it. :)

It wasn't that hard to do, I am actually rather impressed with myself on how clean my lines look. That was all done with my shaky hands people! WOO! I definitely have on my smug suspenders today. 

What I used:

• Base color: Sally Hansen White On
• Gradient: SH White On, essence Irreplacable and Sally Hansen Golden-I
• Black, white and red acrylic paint for the lines and eyes.
• Nail art brushes and dotting tools

I wore these nails yesterday and had lots of compliments on them! This is definitely a look I will be doing again, I think they came out so cute! I'm said that October is basically over! It went by way to fast. I hope you all stick around to see more of my nail art. Thank you to my followers both new and old, I share my art for you! :) HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Until next time,

Erin

Halloween Challenge! Day 10: Recreate Your Favorite Manicure

Hello all! It's the last day of the Halloween Challenge since today is Halloween! I am so excited! I get to dress up for work and it's going to be a blast. I will make sure to post my costume manicure tomorrow so make sure to come back to see it! Anyways today's challenge was to recreate your favorite manicure from the challenge. I choose to recreate The Manicured Monkey's Bump in the Night nails. She made an adorable Frankenstein manicure and I couldn't help but love it! Mine varies a little but I hope you like it!

So like the Manicure Monkey, I did a Frankenstein face and then some stitching for the rest of the nails. She used two different greens but I decided to just use one. I think he came out so cute but I wasn't too happy with him so shiny so...

I threw a matte top coat over him! I think it is so much better! Sometimes matte is the way to go. What do you guys think?

Here's a comparison of the two top coats. The shiny normal top coat came be seen on the left and the dull matted top coat is on the right. Which do you like better?

What I used:

• Base color: Sinful Colors Happy Ending
• Black and white acrylic
• Fine tipped nail art brush
• Dotting tools
• Warpaint Beauty Mattify (matte top coat)

I had just a blast with this challenge! My favorite nails that I did where my Monster nails from Things That Go Bump In the Night. I hope you all loved my manicures and my recreation of The Manicured Monkey's adorable Frankenstein nails. Hope you visit my blog again soon!

Until next time,
Erin

"This is Halloween" Challenge! Day 10: Trick or Treat!

Hello! I have a simple candy corn design for my Trick or treat nails! I thought about stamping but I know a lot of people have been doing that as their trick or treats and I wanted to be different. Though I am not that different because I saw a design just like this and just loved it! Unfortunately  for the life of me I can't remember where I saw the design, so I can't properly give credit. Candy corn is a Halloween candy staple and one of my favorites of the season. I really like the variety pack with the original, cocoa and pumpkin ones!

I just painted my nails with a holographic polish, in this case OPI DS Extravagence, and once dry, I painted the candy corn shapes. First with white acrylic paint, they I painted most of it with the yellow and then the middle with orange. It was pretty simple and I think it came out so cute!

Now it's time to recreate my favorite from another challenger! I loved so many and this was a hard choice but I am currently wearing my recreation so look out for it tomorrow! Halloween's eve! I can't believe how fast time has flown. We get to dress up for work and I'm pretty excited. I'm doing special nails (which I will post probably on November first) and hopefully I will get a picture of me in my costume to share with you guys!

See you tomorrow!
Erin

"This is Halloween" Challenge! Day 9: Graveyard

Hello! Another late post. Apologies but life has been rather hectic as of late. I am just so excited that Halloween is in a couple of days! AH! I had fun doing today's challenge. Graveyards are spooky and perfect for Halloween. I choose to do some headstones and a dancing skeleton, I hope you guys like it!

What I used:

• Base color: NYC Skin Tight Denim
• A coat of Wet 'n Wild Teal of Fortune
• Black and white acrylic paint
• Sinful Colors Mint apple

I've been seeing some awesome graveyard manicures! Mine are simple but I like them. Only two days left of the challenge! I love doing challenges, I'm just a little sad that I didn't put my heart into the Halloween ones as much as I would have liked but starting a new job and having my family emergency has been very distracting. Up next is Trick or Treat nails, my design is simple but I hope you guys like what I came up with.

Until then,

Erin

Halloween Challenge! Day 9: Influenced By a Scary Movie

Hello all! Another late post...This post was suppose to be influenced by a scary movie. Well I am not a scary movie fan so I choose to do a spider mani. Why? Because spiders terrify me and I figured there are scary movies about spiders like Arachnophobia, so it works right? I found this awesome pin on pinterest, so I decided I wanted to replicate it. Over the darker orange, I used a regular orange color using a fan brush. So the orange over the dark orange is in small strokes. Sadly, it doesn't really show up on the photos but I figured I would mention it.

I think this mani came out pretty creepy and cool. What do you guys think? I used masking tape to create the black section of the nails. I then stamped silver spiders over the dividing lines of the two colors. 

What I used:

• Base color: Ulta Sun of a Gun
• Fan brush used with Sally Hansen Sun Kissed over Sun of a Gun
• Sinful colors Black on Black
• Stamp: BM 13
• Sally Hansen Silver Sweep

Only one challenge left! It's going to be hard to choose a manicure to recreate! I think it's more fun to recreate another challenger's mani but there are so many good ones! Everyone did such a cool job! Decisions, decisions!

Until next time,
Erin

"This is Halloween" Challenge! Day 7: Gradient

Hello all! Today I have some Halloween themed gradient nails for you. I still need practice with making gradients but I like the way this one came out. I choose to do orange to yellow with some black pumpkins, since the gradient by itself seemed a little boring.

What I used:

• Base color: Sally Hansen Fashionista Orange
• Gradient: Sally Hansen Sun Kissed, Fashionista Orange, Lightening
• Sponge
• Stamp: BM 305
• Black stamping polish

I can't get over how quickly this month has been flying by! Halloween is next week! How insane! 

See you tomorrow with more pumpkin nails!
Erin

Halloween Challenge! Day 6: Things That Go Bump in the Night

Hello all! When I think of things that go bump in the night, I think of the monsters. To be more specific, I think of the monsters living in your closet or under your bed! I decided to do cute monsters instead of creepy/ scary ones! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

So what do you guys think? Cute right? I just love how they came out. I have gotten so many compliments on them so far. I keep getting asked if they are stickers and when I say that I did them by hand, people are shocked. I feel very proud of this! I really think they came out so cute!

To create this design, I painted my nails two coats of a lighter color; lime green, light blue, light orange, lavender, and a lighter hot pink. Next I took a darker color (that matched the base color, ex. dark green with the lime green) and painted small lines for the monsters fur. I then added the eyes and mouth. I tried to create a different look for each monster. On my left hand I tried to copy the same nails from the right but my index fingers ended up looking different. I think the blue nails totally look like cookie monster, is that just me?

What I used:

• Thumb:
• Sinful Colors Happy Ending
• OPI Jade is the New Black
• Index
• Piggy Polish Blue-ing Romance
• essence Let's get Lost
• Middle
• Sally Hansen Fashionista Orange
• Ulta Sun of a Gun
• Ring finger:
• OPI Planks-a-lot
• L.A. Colors Fun in the Sun
• Pinky
• Sally Hansen Coral Reef
• OPI Too Hot Pink to Hold 'em

I think I will do this design again in the future, it came out so cute!

Until next time,
Erin

Halloween Challenge! Day 5: Freestyle Halloween

Hello all! Apologies for the lateness of this post! I haven't been on my computer for days due to the family  emergency and my shifts at work have been a little different. Anyways, for my freestyle Halloween post I choose to do the Monster Mash.

So we have Frankenstein, Wolf man, a mummy, Dracula, and Frankenstein's bride's hair. Making a design for my pinky nail is so hard, since it is so small! What do you think? 

I'm pretty excited for tomorrow's challenge. I hope you guys will like what I came up with. :)

See you tomorrow!

Erin

"This is Halloween" Challenge! Day 5: Zombies

Hello all! This post is rather late and pretty short. I am currently going through a family crisis and I'm pretty stressed right now. I should get my four posts in for the week but if I don't, please don't hate me. :) Today's challenge was to create zombie nails. I just did zombie nails for the other Halloween Challenge that I am doing, you can see that post here. I honestly had no idea what to do for today. I saw an amazing zombie hand design but I honestly can't find the blog where I saw the cool design. I will keep trying to relocate it and then I will link it later. Anyways, the idea was to create grabbing zombie hands.

What I used:

• Base color: Orly decades of dysfunction
• Red and black acrylic paint
• Nail art brushes

What do you guys think? I think they could have been creepier and more zombie like but oh well. Don't forget to check out all the amazing zombie nails below!

Until next time,

Erin

"This is Halloween" Challenge! Day 4: Jack-O-Lanterns

Hello all! I had a lot of fun with today's challenge! The idea was to create nails with Jack-O-Lanterns! I wanted to do something fun with my pumpkins, so I used a holographic polish for my base color. I think it really made my nails look awesome!

I really don't have much to say about these nails, I think they are awesome and I hope you all like them. I used Nubar Reclaim as my base color and Sally Hansen Sun Kissed for the pumpkins. Everything else was acrylic paint. I hope you guys enjoyed my nails for today, later on I will be posting a guest post! And don't forget to check out the other Jack-O-Lanterns for today. I'm not sure where the new posts start though...

Later!
Erin

Halloween Challenge! Day 4: Witches

Hello all! Sorry for the late post. My first week of work as been rather stressful. I've been so sore and so tired that I just haven't had the energy to blog, which makes me very sad. I was able to create witch nails for you, they aren't the best but here we go. I choose to do the Sanderson sisters from the movie Hocus Pocus; Winnie, Mary and Sarah.

Hocus Pocus is one of my favorite movies, I try to watch it every year for Halloween but sadly I no longer own it and it's not like I can go to a video store and rent it now... Anyways, I still need to work on my faces but for the most part I think my nails look like the Sisters and their cauldron of potion for the children!

I used polish for Winnie's hair and for the cauldron but everything else was acrylic paint. So what do you guys think? Don't be too harsh! I really like how my cauldron came out. The thumb looks crappy but I didn't know what to do for it. In hindsight, I should have done "the book." Oh well, I would like to do more Hocus Pocus nails in the future. 

Next week is freestyle and things that go bump in the night...Should be interesting. I feel like this topics are vary vague which leaves a lot of room but I'm so indecisive that sometimes it's hard for me to decided haha. I can't wait to see what everyone came up with today!

Until next time,
Erin